1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, because of a concern about environmental issues, there is a demand for saving of power in an image forming apparatus. In general, in the image forming apparatus, of a power supply time, an operation time during which processing is actually performed is not necessarily great. For this reason, for a standby time when the apparatus waits for a job, an energy saving mode is executed to reduce power consumption.
In a recent image forming apparatus, with the spread of networks, as an interface with a PC, in addition to a USB being standard mounted, a network interface is standard mounted and a network interface card (NIC) is mounted optionally.
In an image forming apparatus with an NIC mounted optionally, a technique is known in which an energy saving mode function is provided in each of the image forming apparatus and the NIC so as to reduce power consumption.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-266088 describes a technique which, in an information processing apparatus in a power saving state, enables transmission of information regarding data to the outside while maintaining a power saving state even when there is a request to acquire information regarding data being managed by the information processing apparatus from the outside, for the sake of improving a power saving effect.
However, in the related art (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-266088), when there is a request to acquire information (for example, the mode of the image forming apparatus, error, a residual ink (toner) quantity, a counter, the state of a sheet feed/discharge tray, and the like) of the image forming apparatus from the outside while the image forming apparatus and the NIC are both in the energy saving mode, it is necessary that the NIC is transited from the energy saving mode to the normal mode to return the image forming apparatus from the energy saving mode to the normal mode so as only to acquire information of the image forming apparatus. For this reason, useless power consumption may occur as much as when the image forming apparatus is returned to the normal mode.
For example, according to the technique described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-266088, in a case where the energy saving mode function is mounted in each of the image forming apparatus and the NIC, when the image forming apparatus is in the normal mode and the NIC is in the energy saving mode, the image forming apparatus may not provide information of the image forming apparatus to the NIC. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-266088 does not describe a problem regarding the occurrence of useless power consumption and cannot resolve this problem.